Tuesday, 8 June 2010

As preparations for Cape Wrath Trail in July (more of which later) I packed up the rucksack, drove to Cutthroat Bridge on the A57 and took it for a walk over Derwent Edge as far as Back Tor.

Ladybower Reservoir from Whinstone Lee Tor

The Wheel Stones, Derwent Edge

Then down the bridleway to the Strines road. The car park at the road end of this track has been gated shut for over a year now because of logging. Coming down the track I saw for the first time the extent of forest that had been cleared.

Hollingdale Plantation (cleared) from the Strines track

Bluebell woods below Strines Reservoir

Across and up the road a bit is a track which winds its way down to a point between Strines and Dale Dike reservoirs. The latter was the cause of the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864 when the newly built dam burst.

The track climbs steeply (well for Derbyshire) up to a tower, now used as an empty tower, which is visible from the A57 when you come back into Sheffield from the Peak District. It's one of those places that you see for years and never go to. Funnily enough I'd seen it for almost 30 years and never visited it.

Whilst googling for the name for this tower I learnt of a mass murder in a house in the area, where the husband killed his wife and children and the nanny, and then ran off to France finally to be captured on top of the Notre Dame in Paris (by Quasimodo) or it may have been Rouen Cathedral (by Quasi's little known cousin). Anyway, the tower is called Boot's Folly and was built in 1927 by Charles Boot. Apparently there was a bit of stone left over from building a nearby house. I guess this was in the days before Lego.

After the tower, there was some pleasant strolling through upland pasture with gambolling lambs and peewits getting a bit narky because I was a few hundred yards from its nest. And then it was back down the A57 to the car, the tedium of which was broken by a short conversation with a Curlew who walk beside me, well about 50 yds away, which went something along the lines of